


The Good Night Club

by raisedbymoogles



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Insomnia, Storytime, brief mention of trauma, next tf cartoon can we get samuel l. jackson to voice optimus prime, salty language, tomfoolery and shenanigans, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18545728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisedbymoogles/pseuds/raisedbymoogles
Summary: A wave of insomnia seems to be sweeping the Ark tonight. For Bluestreak, it begins with a nightmare and ends with a new appreciation for the bots who have become his family. For Skydive and Air Raid, it's seeing these strange and distant figures in a new light. For Optimus Prime, it's just another late shift.





	The Good Night Club

_0215 hours, Pacific Time_

Bluestreak's optics lit, pale blue flooding the room he shared with Windcharger. 

His HUD booted up, full of indicators he'd never had as a civilian, and he knew where/when/who he was. The echoes of destruction, the voices of a city's worth of dead, began to fade. Praxus was long behind him, as distant and as everpresent as a ghost.

He climbed out of his berth, soft-treaded it past his roommate - not that it mattered, it took a Decepticon alarm to rouse Windcharger from his slumber, which is why he roomed with Bluestreak - and ventured out into the hallway.

Someone was always up, even at this hour. Bluestreak could have sought out Red Alert in the security office or Blaster on comms, but he wasn't in the mood for company, not with the lingering echoes of his dream flashing back and forth behind his optics. He needed something bright and frenetic to blast the images out of his processor. With that in mind, he made his way to the rec room. Maybe, he thought, he could get in a good play session on one of the Autobots' collection of video games before his shift started, while the twins weren't around to hog both controllers.

 

_0245 hours, Pacific Time_

"The hell you doing up?"

"Hi Ratchet," Bluestreak greeted, without even looking up from Mario Kart. "Couldn't sleep. What're you doing up?"

"Checking up on the usual suspects. Cliffjumper should be out of medbay tomorrow if he doesn't do anything foolish between now and 8 AM. Which I'm not ruling out, mind you."

Bluestreak grinned at the screen. He could hear Ratchet approaching behind him, the vibrations of his treadfalls humming through his backstrut. He could picture Ratchet's squinty expression as he chose a sturdy-yet-squashy couch to collapse his entire thirty-ish feet of ambulance on and peer with entirely manufactured old-mechanism-grumpiness at Bluestreak's game, all without having to turn around. Ratchet was Known Territory.

Therefore, some teasing was necessary. "Soft touch," Bluestreak said, and was rewarded by Ratchet's engine backfiring.

"You take that back!"

"You can't fool me, doc, you're not even on shift." Bluestreak leaned into a turn along with the green-clad character on the screen. "You'd rather fuss than recharge."

Ratchet's engine actually _growled._ "Oh, I'll show you fuss, you troublemaker. Hand me that slagging controller."

Laughing, Bluestreak passed the second controller back for him. "So. Rainbow Road?"

"Don't you dare!"

 

_0317 hours, Pacific Time_

Engaged in fierce battle over video-game supremacy as they were, neither Ratchet nor Bluestreak noted the entry of a third until he collapsed face-first on the couch next to Ratchet. "Jazz?" Ratchet blurted, and that half-seconds' distraction cost his character an encounter with a banana peel. "Oh, slaggit!"

"Glagh," Jazz contributed intelligently. "Don't mind me, doc."

Bluestreak glanced back. Seeing the miserable heap of Porsche and Ratchet's worry over same, he wisely paused the game and turned around to face them both. "Hi, Jazz," he offered, low-voiced. "Rough mission?"

"Ngh," Jazz agreed. "Details classified. For a while. But yeah."

Ratchet poked his new couchmate dubiously. Jazz was slack-limbed with exhaustion, but his visor was overbright, clearly running more analyses than was good for him, and the hand he lifted to bat Ratchet's away trembled faintly. Ratchet clearly reached the same conclusion Bluestreak did, for he frowned and caught Jazz's hand. "You haven't even been to the medbay yet, have you?"

"Don't need to. Not injured," Jazz tugged at his hand testingly; Ratchet didn't surrender it, turning it over to expose the wrist panel and tapping it meaningfully. "Aw, c'mon, doc, you're off duty and you know it."

"Shut up and grant me access, you pain in the diodes, I'm doing you a favor," Ratchet ordered. "If Prowl finds out you're _here_ instead of _there_ and refused a checkup you're gonna get sectioned."

Bluestreak wasn't sure that was quite fair - Prowl could be strict but he wasn't that much of a hardaft - but mentioning Prowl put a crack in Jazz's resistance. He made a sour face, flexed his captured hand in indecision; Bluestreak, sensing opportunity as only a trained sniper could, reached out and patted his near shoulder. Jazz's stress-pinched face relaxed into a faintly crooked smile and his wrist panel slid aside with a faint click.

Bluestreak was careful not to let his gaze wander from Jazz, but his peripheral sensors easily picked up the full-body wince from Ratchet when he plugged in and got a scan of Jazz's readouts. "You're worse than Cliffjumper," he lamented, and Jazz made a positively _wounded_ noise. "Here - keep Blue company. I'll go get you a drink."

"Don't have to, Ratch," Jazz protested, but Ratchet was already shoving the controller into his hands and rising from the sofa. "...guess I been volun-told," Jazz surrendered, languidly sitting half-upright and flashing a grin Blue's way.

"We can play something else if you're not feeling like Mario Kart," Bluestreak offered quickly. "Or I can just dig up Zelda if you don't want to play at all? I don't know where your processor's at as far as post-mission processing is concerned. Don't feel like you have to just because that's what Ratchet and I were doing."

Jazz gave the matter due thought. "Nah," he mused, "I think something fast and distracting might be just the thing."

 

_0336 hours, Pacific Time_

Rainbow Road was proving more than a match for Jazz and Bluestreak both, particularly as the former was playing between mouthfuls of the mineral-enriched energon Ratchet insisted he drink. Bluestreak, not as distracted, slowly edged his way into the lead, only to be flung into oblivion by an inopportune blue shell.

"If only we could use those against the 'Cons," he joked as Lakitu fished him back onto the course again.

Jazz chortled, his knee nudging Bluestreak's door as he leaned into a hard turn. "I'll talk to Wheeljack, see if he can build one."

"Talk to me about what?"

"Hi Wheeljack!" Bluestreak called without looking. His doorwings picked up the vibrations as Ratchet and Jazz scooted over, making room for the newcomer on the couch. "Can you make a real-life blue shell?"

"That sounds more like Adam Savage's department than mine," Wheeljack chuckled, slumping down in the space left for him, "but sure, next free day I'll give it a go."

"What are you doing up so late?" Ratchet asked.

"-early," Jazz muttered.

"I've been _trying_ to recharge," Wheeljack complained. "Went to berth early and everything, but my processor won't cycle down. And I'm on the early shift, so at this point it doesn't seem worth it to keep trying to sleep only to have to get up again in a couple of hours."

Bluestreak frowned at the screen. "Is everything okay? I get like that too sometimes, when things get rough, like my threat scanners won't shut off."

"Aww, Blue. I'm fine, don't you worry." Wheeljack leaned forward, bestowing a fond pat on Bluestreak's shoulder. "It's just an overactive creativity module, not stress. I'll wear myself out on shift today and blissfully pass out by evening ration time, just you watch."

"Just as long as you don't pass out _in_ your ration again," Jazz remarked.

"Come on, that was _once!_ "

Jazz's cackle turned into a yelp and a howl of denial as a blue shell creamed his racer within sight of the finish line. "See what I mean?" he commented as two NPC racers blew past him. "You make a few of those things, 'Cons won't stand a chance."

"Ooh." Wheeljack pulled his hand away from Bluestreak's shoulder, and Bluestreak heard the high snap-hum of a dataslate powering on. Clearly the engineer was inspired enough to take notes.

 

_0352 hours, Pacific Time_

Despite the interference of blue shells, Jazz somehow managed to beat the bolts out of Bluestreak on Rainbow Road; the two of them then handed off the controllers to Ratchet and Wheeljack. Gifted as they were in their respective fields, neither medic nor engineer were any great shakes at virtual kart racing, and the match devolved into snark and getting mutually stuck in mud puddles while the AI-controlled characters zipped merrily past them.

"You reprogrammed the controls, didn't you?" Ratchet mock-accused the giggling sprawl of Jazz. "Just to mess with us! Fess up!"

"Nooo," Jazz howled gleefully. "You're just bad drivers!"

"We're _cars,_ " Wheeljack complained over Ratchet's outraged-transmission noise. "We drive ourselves! All the time! Why are we so bad at driving games?"

Bluestreak giggled at them all shamelessly, rocking back against Ratchet's knee. From his position, he could see the open doorway, and a bit of the hallway beyond. A shadow passed beyond it - whoever was on night sentry duty, Bluestreak guessed. "Sorry, are we being too loud?" he called.

The shadow paused. "No such thing as too loud!"

"Skydive!" Bluestreak greeted, as he and Air Raid poked their heads in. "Air Raid, hi! Oh, and Spike!"

The Autobots' first human friend grinned and waved from Air Raid's shoulder. "Hey guys! What are you doing up?"

"Could ask you the same question, mister humans-are-a-diurnal-species," Ratchet said tartly. "Oh, slaggit!" His character veered off course and into the ocean.

Skydive giggled. "I wanna play winner!"

"At this rate neither of us are gonna qualify for that," Wheeljack chuckled, his character in similarly dire straits. "You two on night shift, or are you joining the club?"

The Aerialbots entered by inches, even after six months of living on the Ark - and Spike's hard work - still unsure of their welcome among the older, more established Autobots. Air Raid, his shoulder admirably level for his human passenger, lingered by the arm of the sofa, letting Skydive venture further and claim a nearby chair as his perch. "Club?" Skydive wondered.

"The Can't Slaggin' Sleep Club!" Ratchet announced.

"The Can't Slagging Drive Club," Wheeljack put in, gesturing with amused exasperation at the results of their most recent race. _7th_ and _10th,_ the rankings informed them amid cheery music.

Skydive made grabby hands for the controller. "Hand it over, let me show you how it's done."

"Showing You How It's Done Club!" Air Raid announced, and Spike laughed and clapped his hands in agreement. Bluestreak scooted over to the side of the room to give Skydive an unrestricted view of the scene, and as Ratchet hunkered down over his controller to _show this young upstart a thing or two,_ he craned his head up to grin at Air Raid.

"So what _are_ you doing up this late?" he prompted, hoping to draw one of the quieter Aerialbots into conversation.

Air Raid, unhelpfully, just looked blank. "We always stay up this late."

Bluestreak blinked, transferred his gaze automatically to Spike, who gave him a shameless grin. "I'm a teenager. I'm wired for late nights."

"Teenager, right." Bluestreak flicked a glance at Air Raid again, who just looked contentedly mystified, like he didn't really expect to know what the grownups were talking about. "That makes sense."

 

_0448 hours, Pacific Time_

Skydive beat Ratchet, then Air Raid beat Skydive, then Spike beat Air Raid, Jazz, and Bluestreak in quick succession before voluntarily giving up his spot so Skydive could go again. "Hey," he greeted, fearlessly claiming Bluestreak's knee to watch the two of them do glorious battle in Sunshine Airport. "Doing okay?"

"Doing great," Bluestreak grinned, and was privately shocked to find that it was true.

Skydive was no better a player of virtual racing games than Ratchet or Wheeljack, but he was getting lucky with the power-ups and Bluestreak was actually having to work to maintain his lead. He leaned in, always aware of Spike tucked close to his elbow, and rocked back and forth along with Luigi. The world faded around him - Air Raid's cheers, Wheeljack and Ratchet's banter, Jazz's nearly subvocal humming, all became a pleasant wash of white noise at the back of his processor as he urged himself _forward, faster, just a little farther, just a little more...!_

Luigi blew past the finish line just ahead of Bowser. _1st!_ proclaimed the game amid cheery fanfare. "Yeah!" Bluestreak cheered, lifting his hands. "Racing champion of the Ark, right here!"

_"What on Cybertron is going on."_

It had often been commented, with awe and some envy, that Optimus Prime could _sneak_ when he wanted to. Bluestreak jumped, one hand automatically going to steady Spike, and turned to behold the leader of the Autobots standing in the doorway as though he'd just appeared there out of the ether. Bluestreak's doors hadn't picked up even a whisper of vibration. Either he'd been more absorbed in the game than he'd realized, or the mech now commanding the attention of everyone in the room was _actually magic._

Bluestreak wasn't sure which one he'd lay his credits on, either. "Hi, Prime," he greeted weakly. "Wanna turn?"

Optimus rubbed between his optics with exaggerated exasperation. "Bluestreak... it's nearly five in the morning. What are you doing up? What are _all_ of you doing up?"

"Well - what are _you_ doing up?" Skydive challenged, loud and brash and despite himself Bluestreak found himself cringing; but Jazz outright _giggled_ and Ratchet smirked from his lounger and Bluestreak realized Optimus's optics were brightening with amusement. Nobody, it seemed, was getting in trouble.

" _I_ happen to be on shift, young mech," Optimus told Skydive, crossing his arms in a teasing facsimile of the I Am Disappointed stance. "I have an excuse to be active at this hour."

"Oh, well then," Skydive sniffed, "you can't be in our club."

Jazz chortled from his strutless sprawl on the sofa, sitting more sideways than straight with his head on the arm and his legs slung over Wheeljack's. "Yeah, no responsible soldiers allowed!" 

"...club?" Optimus asked dubiously.

"The Blue Shell Club," Wheeljack muttered into his dataslate.

"The Ain't Got Circadian Rhythm Club," Spike piped up with a shameless grin.

"The, um, the Mornings Suck Anyway Club?" Air Raid hazarded.

"Oh, Primus," Optimus muttered over a 'hear hear' from Ratchet. "All of you. Please go recharge. You make me tired just looking at you."

"Can't do it, boss," Jazz caroled, wiggling his treads in Wheeljack's lap. "It's a matter of pride now!"

"Pride," Optimus repeated, and his expression when he looked at his lieutenant was even more dubious.

"You could read us a bedtime story," Bluestreak offered, because if they were all playing 'tease Optimus' now he didn't want to be left out. He grinned hopefully when Optimus's optics turned to him next, still badly hiding the glow of amusement.

"Yeah, story!" Skydive laughed. "Story, story, story!"

The corners of Optimus's optics crinkled faintly. "A story, is it? Hmm."

"Ohhh," Jazz hummed, sounding vaguely like a warning siren, as Optimus at last entered the room fully. "He's callin' your bluff!"

"Wait, you're actually gonna," Air Raid blurted, torn between disbelief and delight, as opposed to Skydive who was just in disbelief.

Optimus picked his way over to the sofa, nudged Jazz's shoulder. "Budge up," he ordered, and Jazz quickly budged, ending up half on Wheeljack's lap while Optimus filled the vacated space on the sofa with a sigh. "All right," he announced, hauling out a dataslate and powering it on. "Let me see..."

He made a show of scrolling through his files, as the Autobots giggled and scooted closer - all but Ratchet, who Bluestreak suspected wasn't moving from his lounger for anything short of a bomb under his aft and was surveying the rest of them with content amusement. Bluestreak, for his part, was happy to play youngling alongside Skydive and Air Raid and Spike, the latter transferring himself from Bluestreak's knee to Optimus's as soon as they were close enough.

"Ah, here it is," Optimus announced, curling a hand around Spike as instinctively as Bluestreak had. "'The cats nestle close to their kittens,  
the lambs have laid down with the sheep,'" the last and best of the Primes intoned with the solemnity of a ritual chant to Primus. "'You are cozy and warm in your bed, my dear.'" He paused for emphasis, slightly ruined by Jazz already starting to giggle. "'Please go the fuck to sleep.'"

Skydive made a noise like an engine backfiring, a neat trick for a jet; Air Raid cracked up laughing so hard he rocked back on his wings. Optimus paused just long enough for the noise to die down a bit before continuing, pointedly calm, as though he couldn't think _what_ everyone was laughing at. Poorly stifled giggles followed him from stanza to stanza, until Optimus clearly decided to add some of his own acting ability into the reading.

"'All the kids from day care are in dreamland. The froggie has made his last leap.'" At this point he turned to address Jazz directly, as he was the nearest Helpless Giggler in range. "'Hell no, you can't go to the bathroom!'" he scolded. "'Know where you can go?'"

"Where, boss?" Jazz prompted eagerly.

"'The fuck to sleep.'"

Jazz sprawled against Wheeljack's chest, cackling with delight. "Nooo," he howled, "don't wanna," and Bluestreak couldn't hold it at that point, he cracked up, rocking forward hard enough to brush his chevron against Optimus's shin. Optimus sighed, directed his optics downward in a mock invocation to Primus - nudging Bluestreak with his tread at the same time, quiet acknowledgement and affection - and continued.

As he read, Skydive leaned over to mutter into Bluestreak's audial. "Does he do this a lot?"

Bluestreak muffled a grin. _Younglings._ "Do what a lot?" he asked, pretending confusion.

"You know." Skydive gestured vaguely. "Act like a _normal_ bot."

Bluestreak leaned in, beckoning for Skydive to do the same. When the younger bot did so, Bluestreak stage-whispered, "He _is_ a normal bot."

"'The cubs and the lions are snoring,'" Optimus read, and followed up the statement with a credible impression of a human snoring that cracked Spike up. Skydive gave Bluestreak a plain _yeah-right_ look, which Bluestreak answered with an innocent shrug. "'Wrapped in a big snuggly heap.'"

"Like you after too much high-grade," Wheeljack commented from behind his dataslate and Jazz, who was mostly calmed down with his head canted back against the engineer's shoulder.

Which just put him in the Prime's crosshairs, naturally, and he blinked in entirely manufactured innocence as Optimus reached out and tilted his slate down to mock-glower at him. "'How come you can do all this other great shit,'" the Prime commented, tapping the screen, "'but you can't lie the fuck down and sleep?'"

"Just lucky, I guess?" Wheeljack shrugged, and Jazz grinned at the ceiling. Optimus shook his head and kept reading.

"Normal," Skydive muttered, which got Air Raid laughing. Skydive batted at his brother without looking, but Bluestreak was close enough to catch the beginnings of a smile even in the dim light. "Oh yeah. Super normal."

"We're all totally normal around here," Bluestreak agreed, and Skydive made a noise that sounded suspiciously like 'bullshit'. Which was fair enough, honestly, given that Ratchet was loudly critiquing Optimus's oratory style in an effort to throw him off his game, Spike was loudly defending him in the few words he knew of Simplified Cybertronian, which the human could barely pronounce, Wheeljack was _still_ working on a design for an incendiary weapon based on a video game, and Jazz could _not stop giggling._

"Are you broken?" Bluestreak asked the latter, poking his leg. "Did we finally break you?" Jazz twitched his legs in glee. "Guuuys, we broke the third in command."

"'My life is a failure, I'm a shitty-ass parent!'" Optimus lamented.

"Nah, he came like that," Ratchet put in, and Jazz said a rude word in Simplified that Spike immediately repeated in an attempt to memorize it. "Hey, both of you, Prime's the only one who gets to swear."

Optimus, rising to the occasion, finished the stanza in a pointedly flat tone. "'...stop fucking with me, please, and sleep.'"

"Ahahaha, stop!" Jazz slid down the couch, all structural integrity offline. Bluestreak helped Skyfire and Air Raid drag him the rest of the way down and flop on him, giggling. Jazz made a high-pitched squeak and flailed at them in entirely manufactured protest. "Noooo, I ain't a pillow!"

"Jazz is the Official Pillow of the Autobots!" Bluestreak declared, and Jazz tucked an arm over Skydive's, put his head back and laughed himself silly. Skydive blinked at the hand on his elbow, blinked again at Jazz laughing without a care in the world... smiled, and tucked his chin down on Jazz's hand.

Optimus pretty much gave up on reading at that point, setting his slate aside on the arm of the sofa to let both Spike and Wheeljack lounge on him and tease Jazz for obviously being a very comfy pillow. Bluestreak snuggled down between Air Raid and Skydive and gleefully joined in.

 

_0745 hours, Pacific Time_

_Beep... beep._

"Oh slag." Wheeljack jerked up, and Bluestreak blinked the last of the grogginess away as the engineer hurriedly turned off his alarm. "Sorry! Sorry, guys. Shift time. Well, shower-and-fuel-before-shift time. Go back to recharge," he half-whispered, trying to dislodge himself from the messy pile of sleepy Autobots without waking any more of them up.

He needn't have bothered, although Bluestreak appreciated the effort: _he_ was already awake, and Jazz had snapped to full alertness the instant the alarm went off, though he was pretending to still be asleep. By contrast, Air Raid and Skydive appeared dead to the world, and Spike had dragged a bean bag into Optimus's lap sometime in the night so he could comfortably do the same. Ratchet was still in the lounger, head tilted back, vents rattling softly. Bluestreak stifled a grin and looked up, and met the calm blue optics of his leader.

"Cute, huh?" he whispered, waving at Wheeljack's retreating back as he soft-treaded it out the door.

"You didn't hear it from me," Optimus answered, flicking a glance Ratchet's way so Bluestreak would know who he meant, "but - yes, very."

"Did you recharge?"

"Still on shift," Optimus reminded him, and Bluestreak blinked guiltily, but in the Prime's optics there was only contentment. "Don't worry, I'm still hooked into Teletraan-1 from here. I just needed to listen for alerts, and I can do that here just as well as anywhere else on base."

_//Always standing sentinel,//_ Jazz private-commed, still pretending to be as unconscious as the jets.

_//That's Optimus for you.//_ Bluestreak reached out and patted Optimus's shin guard, meeting his optics with a solemn expression. "Prime?"

"Yes, Bluestreak?"

"Go the fuck to sleep."

Optimus and Jazz both tried and failed not to crack up, rousing their respective lapfuls of youngsters, who groused and flailed adorably in protest. Bluestreak sat back and beamed at the comfortable chaos, as refreshed as if he'd had a full recharge.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for the few lines of "Go the Fuck to Sleep" that appear in this fic go to Adam Mansbach and Akashic Books. Just to cover my ass.
> 
> (let optimus prime say fuck 2k19)


End file.
